


The Kingfisher Omen

by tb_ll57



Series: In The Quiet Heart Is Hidden [5]
Category: The Song of the Lioness - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Relationships, Background Slash, F/M, Gap Filler, M/M, Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-22 12:53:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3729673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tb_ll57/pseuds/tb_ll57
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>'It won't save the Queen,' Thom said, though he'd said it a dozen times already, the same useless protest in every vision.  He knew what response he would have, but, but.  But sometimes he was foolish, and maybe this time would be different.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Kingfisher Omen

_I am a young and foolish lad_

_Who lives as I please_

_I lovingly tend the ripening wheat_

_And another reaps it._

_Why not follow me_

_Some day after another?_

 

Bugeilio'r Gwenith Gwyn

Welsh Folk Song

 

He became aware of warm hands tender on his neck, massaging the stiffness out of tense muscles. He became aware of the warm body arrayed at his back, a solid heart beating out of time with his own. He became aware of the warm glow of the fire in the hearth, the brazier heaped about with ashes and embers only barely alight. He became aware, and only then realised he was frozen through, shuddering hard enough to quake the bed.

Alex sat up over him. 'Thom?' he questioned, in the manner of a man who has given up expecting a reply; when Thom closed stinging eyes, Alex exhaled slowly, carefully. After a moment, Alex lay back with him, pulled him close, and held him tight.

'Is it over?'

'Yes,' Thom whispered.

'What did you See?'

'The Queen.'

'How long?'

'A fortnight. Maybe less. The King...'

'Do you want to tell the King?' Alex petted his hair, twining it about two fingers. 'He already knows. Anyone looking at her knows.'

'The King will die too.'

All movement ceased. Even breath. Roger, Thom thought dully, because he knew Alex was thinking it, could not help but think it. All of Roger's schemes, at last come to fruition.  It was time.

'Then Jon will be King,' Alex murmured, almost voiceless.

'Jon will be King,' Thom said, and the faint echo of his vision gave it hollow tones of truth.

Then Alex sighed, and pulled their woollen counterpane to their chins, wrapped Thom close in his arms. 'Sleep,' he said. 'You can't tell anyone anything til morning.'

 

**

 

Thom gnawed a thumbnail already shredded to the quick. He found Court tedious in the best of times, uninterested in the politicking of lords with ancient incomprehensible feuds and deathly bored by the vagaries of trade. He had no idea what made for a good year or a bad one, which pointed remark threatened war and which glazier-bright smile promised peace. He attended because his rank demanded it, or, when that was not sufficient motivation, because the Prince did.

His wandering gaze strayed to Jon. The foul moods of spring and summer had passed. Taking on the mantle of the Voice of the Tribes had steadied him, weighted him with responsibility. In another man that might have stifled, but in Jonathan of Conte it brought something to bloom. He walked straighter, he smiled more, he considered his words before he spoke, and when he spoke men listened. It was as well he did. As the Queen's health declined, the King had withdrawn. He only appeared in public at her side. It was the most debilitating kind of love, Thom thought, and around him noblemen murmured cruder words born of the same anxiety.

Duke Gareth emerged from the Council Chamber at the head of a solemn-faced crowd. The Duke wore his customary brown, rich though the velvet of his doublet was, dripping with gold chains of office, a single winking emerald at his left earlobe. He gripped the hilt of the sword he wore at his hip. He had hardly let it go for days, Thom observed. The Duke politely interrupted the rambling speech of two bickering burghers and stepped up the dais to Jon's chair placed ever so significantly below the empty thrones. Jon tilted up his head to listen as the Duke whispered in his ear. He nodded.

Thom puffed out an impatient breath. He tasted copper, and looked down to find he'd bit himself to bleeding. He smeared the spot of red against the pad of his thumb.

'Thom.' Raoul of Goldenlake, who towered over him with the faint air of enjoyment of a man remembering some joke, which Thom presumed had nothing at all to do with himself and therefore most likely Alanna. Her friends had adopted him readily and in their amicably gruff way ignored all that made him different than his twin. They smiled at his temper, never minding that it was darker than Alanna's and more prone to grudges; they teased his country ways as they had Alanna's and pretended not to notice that Thom, unlike his twin, made no effort to learn better. 'Mithros' beard,' Raoul complained, stroking his own luxuriant bristles. 'Give me a horse and a horizon any day.'

Thom rather agreed. 'Have your squire invent an excuse for you.'

'And have the Duke take the lie out of his hide?'

'That's what squires are for.'

Raoul eyed him sidelong. 'Not very kind at the City of the Gods, are they?'

'Spare the rod and spoil the child,' Thom said absently, his own gaze on Jon, who had put up a hand to halt the burghers and was now fully absorbed in a heated, if mute, exchange with his uncle. They were gathering notice, though it was not unusual; the King was so often absent now that Jon was all but Regent. It was the arguing that was new. Jon rarely disagreed, in public at least, with his elders.

'Lord Thom.'  It was Gareth who summoned him, Jon who sat rigid with his mouth a thin sullen slash.  Thom left his corner reluctantly, performed a perfunctory bow.  'The King wishes to speak with you,' the Duke told him.  'You're to accompany me, if you will.'

Thom looked to Jon, who looked back at him, eyes blank as gemstones.  There was no advice there, no subtle hint that Thom knew how to read.  He nodded his acquiescence, and Jon was unmoved, still as a statue.  It was bad, then, but Jon would not avert it, or perhaps did not have the power to do so.  He was not yet King, after all, no matter he acted more the part than the man who owned the crown.

Gareth dismissed the other councilors who trailed them through the palace halls, and then Thom and he alone climbed the wide slate steps to the Royal Suite.  At every turn dark damask curtains swathed the windows, drowning the corridor in artificial night.  Oil lamps cast a steady orange glow at regular intervals, but the shadows between brought Thom to shivers.  He chewed his thumbnail, forgetting the sting of self-inflicted hurt til blood coated his tongue, thick as syrup.

Gareth stopped him with an outstretched hand that was entirely unnecessary, as Thom had already begun to hang back and slow his steps, dreading the double doors of gilted oak that gated the rooms beyond.  Thom's bones knew those doors.  There was magic here, Roger's magic, though less of that since Thom had set about destroying his stinking residue permeating the very stones.  His own magic, a great deal of it, too new, too bright.  Magic much older than both of them, magic not entirely human, not anymore.  To his Sight it was the deepest of the shadows, and in the shadows something moved, curled, slithered, beckoned.

'What you will hear,' Gareth said.  'You cannot speak it to anyone.  Not to myself.  Not to the Prince.  Not to the Queen.  Not to Alanna.'  He met Thom's eyes, grim.  'Not to Alexander.'

As that neatly accounted for everyone with whom Thom could expect to even vaguely desire to share secrets, he shrugged.  He was careless, but not stupid.  He'd kept more secrets in Corus than he'd accumulated in years of covert study in the City of the Gods.  He was stitched together of secrets, he fancied, when he was given to fancy.  When he was lonely, which was far more frequent, they kept him in good company.

'I'll escort you back when you're done.  Anything you need, I will fetch it.'

To that Thom bowed.  He was wise enough to Court to understand it was humiliating for a man of Gareth's stature to fetch for anyone, much less a man half his age whose only rank was his Gift.  Gareth never looked at him and saw Alanna, he knew.  Gareth was not a man who made those kinds of mistakes.

Silently Thom pressed through the door.  The antechamber was dim, unused, cold.  A servant's cot behind a curtain was undisturbed, perhaps unused in recent days.  The candles of fine parafin were unlit.  Beyond, away in the dark, a weak cough was muffled.

'Trebond.'  Roald appeared at the archway, pale and thin as a ghost, and Thom's heart sped a moment, superstition, Sight, something uglier than that rooting in his breast.  'Thank you for coming,' Roald said, and did not invite him further in, but only to the wooden chairs before an unlit fire.  There was wine, cold and sour, which Thom sipped only because the King poured it himself.  The King sat first, and only then did Thom seat himself.

Roald said, 'I will not dissemble with you.  I want something from you.  As a man, I have no right to ask it.  As a King, I should not command it.  I will do both.'

Thom cradled the goblet between his hands.  'You want me to raise Roger,' he said simply.

Roald hesitated.  He often seemed uncomfortable with Thom's power, and unease crawled his face plainly now, straining the lines at his bruised eyes.  But, as promised, he did not camouflage his hope.  'Yes.  Can it be done?'

'Yes,' Thom replied.

Sitting this close Roald was merely a man, slightly stooped, hair thinning to a peak above his forehead.  His shirt was stained with sweat beneath the arms.  The knees of his hosen sagged, and dust collected in blotches on the knees, as if he had knelt a long time in prayer.  The Gods had not answered this.  Or perhaps they had.  Perhaps this was not desperate, but inspired.

'It won't save the Queen,' Thom said, though he'd said it a dozen times already, the same useless protest in every vision.  He knew what response he would have, but, but.  But sometimes he was foolish, and maybe this time would be different.

Roald's pallid face suffused with red.  'You cannot know that!'

'I do know it.'

'It was your sister's sin that inflicted this curse on Lianne,' Roald spat, but almost immediately he collected himself, hands clenched to fists on his thighs.  'If Roger's death had been just his magicks would have died with him.  But the Queen suffers still.  This is the sign of the Gods.  Roger should have lived.'

Had he lived, the Queen certainly would have died.  To bring him back now would have no effect on old spells, even if that were truly what ailed the Queen.  But there was no reasoning with illogic.  It was not sense the King spewed him at him, but fever, hunger, desperate love.

At Thom's silence, the King grew only more intense, eyes boring into Thom's downcast face.  'If I had known the truth, I would never have granted her shield,' he said.  'It is not too late for me to take it from her.  I have heard it said that she quests for the Dominion Jewel.  For her shield, she will do what you refuse.'

'Not for her shield.'  For her guilt, perhaps.  For justice, if that was what this warped ideal had become in Corus.  'It won't save the Queen,' he said again.  'This is the truth, your Majesty.  Please believe me.'

'Get out,' Roald hissed.  'Get away from me, Trebond.  You pollute the very air.  I will not have it!'

He found Alex at the practise yard.  To breathe clean air was heady relief, to feel sun on his skin, to hear laughter and unimportant chatter.  It overwhelmed him, and he stood locked in indecision, to call out for Alex or to find some dim hole in which to hide.  Gareth had followed him, suspecting him no doubt, but Thom merely hung back along the Wall, hot stone at his back, grass beneath his feet, gnawing his raw nails.  Alex was sparring with his new squire, Henrim, a scowling lad who was quick on his feet but never as quick as Alex, who whirled like a dancer, his sword flashing in the light.  There was fierce light in Alex's face, his eyes bright and black and a small smile curving his mouth.  Joy.  Alex only ever found joy in fencing.  Never with Thom.

There was a reason for that, Thom had long been sure, but he didn't want to know it for truth.

He left without ever catching Alex's attention, and Gareth abandoned him when he turned in for the library.  Thom waited to be sure he'd gone, and then he sneaked out, stealing down the halls avoiding the bows of servants who might remember they'd seen him heading in this particular direction.  He was one of only three mages capable of breaking the locks on this door, and he sent his Gift ahead of him in a blast of pure power, overwhelming the ward.  Roger's laboratory opened for him, and Thom steeled himself.

The flat dish of dull bronze lit with purple flame at the flick of his hand.  Thom sat on a wobbly three-legged stool, lowering his head on his arms, to stare into the dancing fire.  It did not light the dark lab, but seemed to draw all the air in the windowless room toward it.  Thom propped his chin on his crossed wrists across the table, and, unblinking, plunged himself into the well of purple flame that lived inside his core.  Magic swallowed him up, opened him up, and the flame carried him beyond the living veil.

_Gold mail gleamed against the dark. Copper hair shone equally bright, bright as the torch in a pale hand bobbing as it descended the stairs. The crystal in the hilt of her sword gleamed, but brightest of all was the jewel in her hand. No larger than her palm, it absorbed all the light and refracted it back threefold in fractured beams. The jewel was--_

No.  No.  He had changed things.  He had changed it-- he had to have changed it--

_The jewel was so much the centre of it all that he only slowly realised where she is. Though he'd never seen it before, he'd read of such things; these were catacombs. The walls lining her path weren't round stones, but skulls, grey with dusty age, packed dozens deep. The bones closed in behind her as she approached the tomb. When she halted, it trembled. She raised the jewel, and the uncarved marble lid cracked straight down the middle, the broken halves falling aside. She raised the jewel, face serene, and from within the tomb he obeyed her summons._

With a shriek of rage, Thom flung the dish into the wall.  The flame spattered and went dark.

 

**

 

The Dancing Dove was quiet, of a mid-afternoon, specially on a Temple Day.  Corus was all but depopulated, only the hardiest of merchants remaining open, and then only to guard against the clever thieves who used their fellow citizens' distraction to their own benefit.  Carelessly unlatched homes were finding themselves cheerfully burgled, all over the City.  Unwatched valuables were falling into pockets.  The more pious of George's people absented themselves from such crude methods, and merely lifted a few spendable coins from the collection plates as they passed the rounds at services.

George Cooper, King of Thieves, paid homage to the Crooked God as was proper, and drank a strong ale as he did the week's sums for the books.  Thom, sprawled in a chair by the window, watched him with keen eyes, but waited all the same for him to finish at his own pace.

'Business prospering,' George announced languidly, as the bell clanged, far enough away to be a bass tone felt more than heard.

Thom bit into his thumb, and winced.  He wiped away blood on his doublet.  'Which business would that be?' he wondered.

'A little of this, a little of that,' George winked.  He poured another ale from the pitcher, and once again offered Thom a mug.  Once again Thom waved him off.

Then, abruptly changing his mind, he said, 'Rather-- please.  If you would.'

George knew enough of him to find that odd.  He poured, and Thom sipped cautiously.  He'd never had ale, but found it very different to the fine wine they served at Court.  It was grainy in taste, like bread.  He scraped his tongue along his teeth, wrinkling his nose at the faint oaky bitterness his swallow left behind.

'Suppose it was water all those years in the City of the Gods,' George observed.

'They ferment goat's milk,' Thom said, not faking his shudder of distaste.  George grinned.  He saluted Thom with his ale, and they drank together.

'No gods for you?' George asked then, propping his boots on the low table.  In his private quarters above the Inn, sound was muffled, the summer sun baked everything to a golden glow, and he could have been any moderately prosperous merchant's son.  In Trebond, he would have been too grand for Thom.  Lord he may have been, but not a wealthy one.  In Corus, it was only the favour of the Prince that kept Thom in finery.

'Hm?' Thom said, realising he'd forgot the question.

'Master or no, you aren't a Mithran.  You don't carry his totems, and I've never heard you swear by him.'

'Shakith,' Thom said, and George knew enough, it seemed, about the Goddess of Seers to find that troubling.

'Can I stay again tonight?' Thom abruptly asked him.  He chewed at his finger again before he remembered, and drank his ale instead.

'As you like,' George replied easily.  Then, mild as summer rain, he said, 'Not that I'm not enjoyin' your company, but won't you be missed at the Palace?'

George was likely not enjoying his company, as Thom had been dour at his best and bleakly despairing at his worst, but George had weathered it without a word and given him generous space or pleasant conversation as Thom needed.  A pinprick of regret swayed Thom a moment, but only a moment.  George didn't do it for him.  Like everyone else, he did it for Alanna.  Alanna could thank him whenever she bothered to return from her adventures.

'Perhaps I could send a note,' George prodded, and Thom hadn't answered, which was evidently answer enough.  'Gary holds his tongue, but he'd know where you are if you were needed.'

'The Queen dies tomorrow,' Thom said.

George went silent as if spelled.  Thom put his thumb between his teeth again.

They sat like that til evening, when the city folk returned from the temples and the raucous crowd filled up the Dancing Dove with laughter and oblivious cheer, and the toothless old innkeeper Solom brought up a supper of fine roast and potatoes and pudding, which neither man touched.  George took to his bed long after the noise had all died down and the streets were empty again, but he didn't sleep, and he didn't ask Thom to go, so Thom stayed in his chair by the window and stared up at the stars, and George stared at the ceiling, waiting for everything to change.

 

**

 

Alex covered Thom's hands.  'Stop,' he said, and if not for the quiet beseeching question in his eyes, Thom would have shoved him away with a curse.  Instead, he wiped his tongue over the blood on his lip, and let Alex bring a bowl of water to clean his battered hands.

Court was in mourning.  Jon had been vanished as if he'd never been; Myles had been the one to tell him, finding him out in the stables, and Thom wondered if Alanna knew yet, if the Voice had shared his grief with his desert people and the desert people had shared with their Burning Brightly One.  Maybe Alanna was on her way home.  Thom hadn't had a vision of his twin in months.  Since they'd parted ways in the lands of the Bloody Hawk.  He hated her a little for not so much as writing him, but he knew she'd be back, didn't he.

She'd be back with the Dominion Jewel.

'You need to sleep,' Alex told him.

'No.'

'You need to eat.'

'Stop chiding me like a child.'

'Stop fighting me.'  Alex said it fiercely, and Thom raised his head to see hot fury in Alex's solemn face.  'There is nothing without you,' Alex said.

It was the closest to a declaration either had ever come.  Alex said it as if he were passing granite.  Thom shocked himself, opening his mouth, no idea what he meant to reply, and then laughing instead.

Alex knocked over the bowl and stormed out.  Or, at least, left quietly, but the door thudded shut behind him with somewhat more force than necessary, and he didn't come back and soothe Thom's temper the way he always did, no matter that Thom sat there with cold water dripping down his hosen and soaking into his shoes.

He cried a little, but only because he was absolutely sure no-one would hear.  And then he wiped his face and he changed his boots and he, too, left.

 

**

 

The King moved like a man in shock.  There was a drunken grace to his movements, his hands like birds launching up to the air and then fluttering, falling.  His face was slack, numb.

He said, 'Bring her back.'

'Sire.'

'You said it was possible.'

'It may be,' he hedged.

'You said it was possible.  In this very chamber.'

'It may be possible,' Thom admitted, twisting his hands in his lap.  'But it should not be done.  It violates nature.'

'You of all people scoff at violating nature?'  Roald's wide colourless eyes pinned him.  'You sneaked your sister into this palace and aided her deception for seven years.  You share your bed with one of my knights.'  At Thom's blush, Roald put out a hand, just holding back from touching Thom's chin, but Thom stared him eye to eye, and Roald's contempt was all but a physical blow.  'Your mother was half-Scanran,' Roald said.  'My father thought her half-demon.  No good will come of that line, he told me.  I should have listened.  You don't even look human.'

'Even if--'  Thom caught the rasp in his dry throat.  'Even if I can bring her back she won't be the same.'

'She will be my Lianne.'  A glint of tears in Roald's eyes chased away the crazed facade, and like an egg cracking Roald was himself again, a man in grief.  His hands trembled as he hid his face behind them.  But then he was on his feet, those bony hands latching in Thom's doublet, and with lunatic strength he hauled Thom from his chair and through the royal bedchamber, dragging him along when he stumbled and throwing him at the bed.  The dead Queen lay there, flesh sunken and waxy three days after her last breath, the coins over her eyes ghoulish as the garish ruby-studded gown that wrapped her shrunken body.  Roald shoved him to his knees, as Thom caught at the bedclothes and the carpet and the candelabra, leaving wreckage in the wake of their violence.  Roald forced him down and grabbed the Queen's blue-tinged hand, the ring of her royal estate scratching at Thom's cheek though he cringed and strained away.  'This is my Queen,' Roald seethed.  'I am your King.  You swore me fealty.  Will you forsake me?  Will you?'

'Father!'  Jon was there, just suddenly there, and he pried them apart, freed Thom.  It was his father he tended, of course, coaxing the King away, talking to him low and steady as one did a spooked horse, and Thom crawled away, too shaken to trust his legs.  The candles had sprayed wax all over the stone, still soft and he slipped in it, palm smearing it.  Jon was there to help him up, a moment later, catching him under the arms and hurrying him out of the bedchamber.  They didn't stop until they were beyond the double doors and in the cool dark corridor.

'Get Alexander of Tirragen,' Jon snapped at one of the useless courtiers who lingered here, all of them crowded about eager to show their mourning blacks and be the first to offer their condolences.  Jon adjusted his grip, and Thom adjusted his expression, blank as stone, blank as Jon's practised courtesy as they wove through the crowd.  Jon threw aside a tapestry drape and gained them privacy in the servant's stairwell.  'Sit,' Jon said, solicitous, and squeezed his shoulder, and left him there alone.  He was back, it seemed both an age and a blink later, and he carried a cup of hot spiced wine, and made sure Thom could hold it.  'Get some colour back, you look a fright,' Jon said, and dropped onto the step beside him.

'I'm sorry,' Thom whispered.

'No.'  Jon shook his head.  'No, Thom.  Please.  Please, forgive him.  He's-- he's not himself.'

'You drink, too.'  Thom offered the wine.  Jon didn't disagree, taking three swift swallows and grimacing.  He looked as though he wanted more, but gave the rest to Thom anyway.  He rubbed his hands over his beard, dug the balls of his thumbs into his eyes.  For a long time, then, he didn't move.  Thom finished the wine and stared at the sore mark the hot wax had left in his palm.

'I know what he wants you to do,' Jon said then, so low that Thom only just heard, even in the quiet between them.  'It's madness, isn't it.'

'Yes,' Thom said.  Then, 'No.  I don't know.  Jon.  He's my King.'

Jon's hands fell limp between his knees.  'You could disobey,' he said at last.

'I'd be exiled.  He'd take Alanna's shield.'  Thom licked his dry lips.  'A mage who won't bow to earthly power could never be trusted again.  I'd be too dangerous for any Court.  I couldn't even go to another kingdom.'

'I'd have you back.  I know your character.'

'You'll always wonder if I'd disobey you, too, one day,' Thom said.

Jon drew a very deep breath, as if it were the last he'd ever breathe.  'He'll give it up.  When he's slept, when he's... come to terms.'

'Highness?'  It was Alex.  He peered tentatively around the tapestry, brows frowning when he saw Thom.  'They're all saying there was shouting.  The King is asking for you.'

Jon put his hand on Thom's wrist.  'Do nothing.  Believe in me.'

But the order came that night.  Gareth carried it, the King's seal in red wax like a bloody splotch on the parchment.  Alex, caught abed and naked, sat up against the pillows as Gareth spoke to Thom at the door, declining to enter.  Thom clutched his dressing gown about his chest, his gut ringing hollow as he read the King's brief missive.

'I will burn this,' Gareth said, his eyes on the torch sconce above Thom's head, perhaps ashamed to meet his gaze directly.  'No-one can know.  Do you understand?'

'The Prince,' Thom mumbled.

'Won't know until it's too late.'

'It's not a curse.  It's not a sin.  Roger deserved death.  The Queen didn't.  People die anyway.'

'The King is beyond--'  Gareth did not say 'reason'.  It hung between them, that treasonous suggestion.  Even Jon had not dared that much.  Gareth ripped the parchment, two ragged halves, and hid them in his sleeve.  'Good night, Master Thom.'

Alex was waiting for him.  Thom said nothing to him, and Alex did not wait for that.  He rolled Thom beneath him and slid low, and his mouth was on Thom, bringing him to arousal with determination.  He tore at the halves of Thom's gown and pressed kisses to his chest, his neck, the tip of each bloody finger, and then his flat belly heaved against Thom's and his hips twisted and Thom hissed, head tipping back, Alex filling him urgently.  They rocked, Alex leaning over him dark and sweating and grinding his jaws.  But it released the horrid tightness in his chest, it released the burning pain behind his eyes, it released the knot of fear that had wound him tighter and tighter for weeks.

'What if there's nothing even with me?' Thom breathed, and Alex smothered his doubt with something that felt very much like love, and left only the faintest bitter taste behind.

 

**

 

The flat dish of dull bronze lit with purple flame at the flick of his hand.  Thom sat on the wobbly stool.  Dust gathered in thick clods between his fingers as he swept clear the tabletop, sneezing away the tickle in his nose.  The faint acid tinge of old magic was worst in this room, this room of all places.  Even the Mithran temples in the City of the Gods had not throbbed with this much power.  It was grotesque.  It was heady.  It was too tempting.

He set himself level with the dish by lowering his head to his arms.  There was discomfort in hunching over the table, but he put aside those small physical complaints and concentrated only on what he'd come to accomplish.  The flame leapt high, and froze like a sheet of glass, blazing bright as the darkness crept in close.

Gold gleams against the dark. Copper hair shines equally bright, bright as the torch in a pale hand bobbing as it descends the stairs. The crystal in the magician's rod has its own brilliant lustre, bright as the jewel in the large ring on the left hand.  It is the royal ring, the King's signet, and it absorbs all the light and refracts it back threefold in fractured beams. The jewel is--

_The jewel is so much the centre of it all that he only slowly realises where he is. Though he's never seen it before, he's read of such things; these are catacombs. The walls lining his path aren't round stones, but skulls, grey with dusty age, packed dozens deep. The bones close in behind him as he approaches the tomb. When he halts, it trembles. He raises the jewel, and the uncarved marble lid cracks straight down the middle, the broken halves falling aside. He raises the jewel, face serene, and from within the tomb Roger obeys his summons._

And then, slowly, through the trance, another familiar vision, but this one plays out exactly as it always has before.  _The King in the forest, Gareth and Baird behind him, and there's a few other faces he knows, the King's Council.  They wear bright colours, so full mourning has passed, but the King is still in black, and he is like a shell of himself, a painted face on a hollow man.  The King slips away, rides alone for a time, serene in his sadness, and then there is a ravine, and the King leans low to pat the horse on his neck, sits high to turn his head up to the dappled sunlight streaming through the trees.  He goads the horse with sharp heels, and they run, taking the steep gorge at a gallop, and they fly out in a glorious arc, and then they fall, fall, fall.  All is silent._

Thom woke with a gasp.

Alex was there.  Alex held him, as if he were something precious and fragile, and murmured against the shell of his ear.  The flame went out, Thom's magic ebbing away.

'Do you want me to warn him?' Alex was asking.

'It won't matter,' Thom managed.  'If it were going to change, it would have.'

After a time of quiet, Alex said, 'Come away.'

'No.  I have a task.'

'Tomorrow, then.'

'No.'  Thom curled trembling fingers over Alex's arms.  He didn't want to cling, didn't want to let him go.  Indecision lingered.  'All Hallows,' he mused.  'The next night of Power is All Hallows.'

'Then,' Alex said, 'for tonight you should rest.  There's time.'  He swept the sweaty hair from Thom's forehead and rested his cool hand there.  'We have time,' he said.

Thom closed his aching eyes.  'Yes,' he agreed.  'We have a little longer.'


End file.
